Penny of Top Hill Trail

“Say, you little squirrel! You’d make some sailor. It’s hungry I’ve been for sight of you. I met Gene in town this afternoon and he told me about the wonderful stunt you pulled off this morning for Francis.”

“That was nothing. But – have you come back, Jo?”

“Not yet. I’m motoring in from town and left my car down in the road. I just thought I’d pass by your window and let out a whistle for you.”

“Jo, I came down to say something serious – ”

“You can say anything you like to me, Miss Penny Ante,” he replied encouragingly.

“Come away where no one can overhear our voices.”

They strolled away out of the moonlight to the shelter of some shrubbery where they talked long and earnestly. On the way back to the house, Pen, lifting her eyes to his, was struck by the look in his boyish face.

“Jo,” she said, a slight wistfulness in her tone, “you really love – the way a woman loves.”

“What’s the use,” he said defiantly, “if the one I love won’t have me – she – ”

He stopped short and looked at her keenly.

“You know, Jo, you must learn to be patient and await – developments.”

A light leaped to his eyes.

“I’ll wait! But the limit mustn’t be too far. Do you know what Gene confided to me to-night? He thinks that Kurt is in love with you!”

She laughed mirthlessly.

“Kurt! He wouldn’t know how to love. If he did, he wouldn’t let himself. He would hang on to his love like a Jew to a bargain. Who would want a grudging love?”

“Kurt is my pal – he – ”

“He won’t be if he finds us lingering here. You reconnoitre and see if he is still in the window. I don’t intend to shinny up this tree. It’s so much easier going down than up.”

“You can go in the kitchen way. It’s cook’s affinity night, and she’s somewhere with Gus.”

“The kitchen is where I go in then. Jo, are you very sure that you are in love – enough to marry a thief? You’re only a boy. Better keep your love until you are older.”

“I am not a boy. I am two and twenty.”

“Quite an old man! I’ll see you very soon again, and maybe I can give you – your answer. Kurt goes to town early in the morning. Meet me in the pergola near the garage. Good night!”

By way of the kitchen and back stairs she reached her room undetected.

“Dear old Jo! Poor Kurt!” she thought sleepily, as she stretched herself luxuriously to rest. “It’s a very small, very funny old world, and the thief is certainly getting in deep waters.”

On the trail to Westcott’s, Jo was chuckling to himself.

“The little thief! If she isn’t the slickest little lass I ever saw!”

In the library, oblivious to time and place, Kurt still lingered, his dream-like memories trying to learn the tune that Pan was piping on his reeds.

CHAPTER VIII

At the breakfast-table Pen found at her plate a little bunch of flowers, clumsily arranged and tied.

“From Jo,” informed Betty – “The Bulletin,” as her father was wont to call her. “He came just after Uncle Kurt started for town.”

Pen smiled as she took up the little stiff nosegay. She held it lightly for a moment, looking down at the blossoms. There was a mute appeal in the little messengers from the boyish lover. Something infinitely tender stirred in her heart for a second, bringing a tear to her eye, as she mused upon his boyish faith in love.

She put the flowers in the glass of water beside her plate, and gave her attention to the prattle of the children.

After breakfast she pinned the little nosegay to her middy and went down to the pergola.

Jo saw her coming and hurried forward to meet her, his eyes brightening when he saw the flowers.

“Thank you, Jo. They are very pretty.”

“Thank you for wearing them.”

“I asked you to come here this morning, Jo, so you would do me a favor.”

“You know I would.”

“Will you mail this letter for me? I wrote it last night after you left, and you are the only one I can trust. And – Jo – will you please not read the address?”

He put the letter in his pocket.

“You can trust me.”

“You had better go, because I hear the rattle that can be made only by Kurt’s car. He must have come back for something. You can go around the bend here.”

“Say, Penny Ante, I don’t like this deceiving him – ”

“Just a bit longer, Jo,” she said persuasively. “Mrs. Kingdon said to wait until her return.”

He followed her instructions, and she returned to the house.

“It’s a great possession,” she thought musingly, “the big love of a true and simple heart like his. It would probably be idyllic to live a life of love up here in these hills with the man of one’s choice, I suppose, but a happiness too tame for me. To be sure, there would be the excitement of trying to ruffle the love-feathers, but that, too, in time would pall. I wonder how much longer I shall stay hidden up here before my past finds me out. Any minute something is sure to drop and I will be called back – back to my other life that is less enticing now I have had a taste of domesticity.

“But,” she reflected, “domesticity doesn’t satisfy long. This semi-security is getting on my nerves. Hebby isn’t so good a trailer as I feared he would be, or he’d have tracked me up here.”

Her meditations were diverted by a tattoo upon her door which she had locked so that the ever-present, ever-prying Betty and the all-wise Francis could not intrude.

“Aunt Penny, let us in!” came in aggrieved chorus.

“I’ve a message for you, Aunt Pen. Open the door,” came Francis’ insistent voice.

The pounding and the voices forced a capitulation. She admitted the trio.

“Mrs. Merlin is going to take us to her house for the rest of the day,” informed Francis, “and we will have a picnic dinner there. She would have asked you, too, only Uncle Kurt came back and wants you to ride with him. He didn’t have to go ’way to town, ’cause he met the man he wanted to see on the way here.”

“Now what has come over the spirit of his dreams?” Pen asked herself wonderingly as she got into her riding things. “Well, there is always the refuge of fast riding. That is the only time I can make my tongue behave. I’ll give him no chance to preach, that’s sure!”

When they set out on their ride, she was careful not to let the brisk pace falter. They stopped for luncheon at a ranch-house where there were many people at the table; but on the way home, when nearing the big bend, Kurt rode up to her; his detaining hand on the bridle slackened the speed she was striving to maintain.

“I want to say something to you,” he began stiffly. “You mustn’t think because I say nothing, that I am unmindful of what you have overcome – I – ”

She stole a side glance at him. His eyes were as sombre and impenetrable as ever, but his chin worked nervously.

“You mean that I deserve a credit mark for not having lifted the children’s banks, or helped myself to the family silver and jewels. It’s sweet in you to put such trust in me and commend me for such heroic resistance!”

She jerked her bridle from his grasp and rode furiously on to the house, and had dismounted and escaped to her room before he could overtake her.

CHAPTER IX

Pen found the ranch-house quite deserted the next morning. Kurt had gone to Wolf Creek to purchase cattle and would not return until night. A little scrawled note from Francis apprised her of the fact that Mrs. Merlin was taking himself, Billy and Betty to spend the day at her own home.

“A whole day alone for the first time in ages!” she thought exultingly. “It is surely Pen Lamont’s day. What shall I do to celebrate? Stop the clock and play with the matches? I must do something stupendous. I know. I will go into town and shop. I will go in style, too.”

She took Kingdon’s racing car out of the garage, and was soon speeding down the hills with the little thrill of ecstasy that comes from leaving a beaten track.

In town she left the car in front of the hotel and went down the Main street, looking in dismay at the windows loaded with assorted and heterogeneous lots of feminine apparel. At last she came to a little shop with but three garments on display, all of them quite smart in style.

“You must be a ‘lost, strayed or stolen,’” she apostrophized in delight.

She went within and purchased two gowns with all the many and necessary accessories thereto.

“Lucky, Kind Kurt and Bender didn’t search me that day,” she thought. “I never saw a sheriff or a near-sheriff so slack. If they’d been in my business, they’d have known that you can’t always tell what’s in the pocket of a ragged frock.”

She visited in turn a shoe store, a soda water fountain and a beauty shop. Then it was the town time for dining, and she returned to the hotel.

“I shouldn’t have exhausted the resources of the town so soon,” she thought ruefully, as she stood in the office after registering. “I don’t know what I will do this afternoon unless I sit in a red plush chair in the Ladies’ Parlor and gaze out through the meshes of a coarse lace curtain at the passers-by. I might call on Bender and see if he’d remember me. Bet his wife would. Maybe something interesting will come along, though.”

Something did. It came in the shape of a lean, brown-faced young man.

“Larry, Larry!” she cried. “It’s a homecoming to see you. I hadn’t any idea what part of the world you were in. What are you doing here?”

“The Thief!” he exclaimed, his dark eyes beaming with pleasure.

“Not so loud. I am Pen Lamont, at present. Incog, you see, under my real name, the least known of any. So don’t squeal on me.”

“I never gave anyone away yet, Pen, dear. What are you doing in this neck o’ the woods?”

“I am in hiding in the hills – at a ranch – quite domesticated. My first glimpse of a home. Like it better than I supposed I could.”

“You’d better watch out. Hebler is up in these parts somewhere, I hear. He’ll get you yet, Pen!”

“Hebler! You make my heart stop beating. I hit this trail more to escape him than anything else. What is he here for?”

“For you, I fancy. I ran across Wilks the other day and he said he heard Hebler say, ‘He’d get that thief if he never did another thing.’ So lay low. Are you here alone in town to-day?”

“Alone and untethered for the first time in ages. Same with you?”

“You’re right as to the alone part; but I am not altogether free. I have to give an exhibition fool flight this afternoon in my little old flier. We’ll have dinner together, and the rest of the day. Will you?”

“Will I? Try me.”

“What’s the idea, Pen?” he asked as they went into the long dining-room and chose a remote table.

“I don’t know, Larry. I had one, but I seem to have lost it in trying to pick up others. I’m floundering.”

“You’ve always been in wrong, Pen. Wish you’d find your level. You made me ashamed of my old life. I am string-straight now, thanky.”

“I am glad, Larry. You never were crooked, you know – just a bit reckless. Tell me about yourself.”

“You gave me a good steer when you suggested this sky stuff. I don’t believe a flying man could be very bad – up there in the clouds in a world all his own. Whenever I felt as if I must break over the traces and go off for a time, I’d just get into my little old flier and hit the high spots and that would give me more thrills than all the thirst parlors ever brought. I am going soon to fly for France. In fact, I’m ‘on my way’ now.”

“Larry! I am proud of you! But it tugs at my heartstrings to have you go, and in an aeroplane!”

“Did you ever go up, Pen?”

“No; it’s about the only exciting thing I haven’t done, and it’s the only stunt I ever lacked the nerve to tackle.”

“Terrors of the unknown? I’m booked for some of that fancy flying this afternoon, and you can watch me from the field.”

“I knew this was to be a real day, but I never hoped for such a big handful of luck as seeing you again and in such a good act.”

“Always invest heavily in hope, Pen. It is free to all, and you come out ahead because you get your dividends in anticipating anyway, and you know anticipation – ”

“Hold on, Larry, don’t be a bromide!”

“Everyone is a bromide now. Sulphides are all in the asylums. I am hoping for a chance to win the medal militaire– I mean for the chance to do something worth getting one.”

Pen’s pleasure in her surreptitious expedition, the delight in shopping and the excitement of meeting some one from her former life had brought a most vivid beauty to her delicate face, and Larry looked at her with an approval that brought forth a sudden wonder.

“Say, Pen!” he exclaimed excitedly, “you haven’t got a man up there at your ranch, have you?”

“Certainly; two of them,” she replied assuredly.

“That’s all right. So long as there are two, it’s nothing serious. Safety in numbers, remember.”

After dinner they motored out to the field where the exhibition was to be given. A coatless, tanned, weather-beaten crowd had already gathered.

Pen stood apart from the spectators, watching Larry whirl, turn turtle, and perform all the aviation agonies so fascinating to the untutored. When he shut off the engine and swung down, skimming the ground for a way and stopping gently, she was in waiting nearby.

“I loathe this kind of exhibition work!” he declared. “It’s silly stuff, but it’s what the public wants. Sure you don’t want to try a little straight flight?” he tempted.

“N – o, Larry. Vice versa for mine, as the Irishman said.”

“All right. Here, Meder!” he said to the mechanic, who had come up. “Take care of the flier. I’ll see you later at the hotel.”

“It was wonderful, Larry,” said Pen as they were motoring to town. “I seem to see you from such a new angle now. I have always thought of you as a lovable, happy-go-lucky boy, but when I saw you take the air, I knew you had come to be something far different. You have the hawk-sense of balance, the sixth sense – the sense woman was supposed to have a monopoly of till the day of aeroplanes arrived. You had nerve to go up there and yet you were not nervous.”

“A fellow has to be without nerve and yet nervy,” explained Larry. “If he loses his sense of equilibrium up there, it’s all off; yet he has to be always ready to take a chance and to find one.”

“And, Larry – when you fly to the colors – ”

“To the tricolors,” he interrupted.

“It will bring out the biggest and bravest and best there is in you, Larry. I am so glad! Don’t go out of my life again. Let me hear from you when you get over.”

“I was sore, Pen, when you handed me such a lecture, though it was coming to me all right. But it stuck, and the time came when I was grateful. When I found I could make good, I couldn’t find you. I wrote every one of the crowd or went to see them, but you had mysteriously disappeared. Hebby said you must have been run in.”

“Was; but luck was with me again. I will give you an address that will always reach me.”

“I shall never go up, Pen, without thinking of you and to-day. But you have told me very little of yourself. Are you still – ”

“The thief? Not at present. I am enjoying an interlude; but there are times when virtue palls, but I mean to keep out of Hebler’s clutches. Larry, I believe I will let you out here – on the edge of the town – the main street. I have a long ride before me. It’s lonesome to say good-bye.”

“I expect to be in two or three days yet – waiting for some mail.”

“I wish I might see you again, Larry, but I don’t know how I can manage it. If anyone knew I were in town to-day, it might lead to – developments. Send me your address at the port you are to sail from, and I’ll have things there for you.”

“Good-bye, Pen. You’re the best little scout I ever knew.”

He kissed her and got out of the car. There were tears in her eyes as she motored on up through the hills land. The air grew cold and brisk; she felt the sense of silence and strength. She recalled her first ride up these hills in the early morning, and that turned her thoughts to Kurt. She wondered if he were of the stuff that bird men are made of. How much more sphinx-like he was, and how different from the keen, alert, business-like flier Larry had shown himself to be! They were types as remote as the eagle and the lark. Larry, of course, was the lark. She had a feeling of loneliness in her knowledge of his going so far away. He knew more about her than any one else. She never had to play a part with him.

Soon, all too soon, she found herself at the ranch. Dinner was over and the children had gone upstairs with Mrs. Merlin.

Kurt returned a few moments later and came into the library where she sat alone by the open fire, pensive and distrait, still thinking of Larry and of his going into service.

He looked at her oddly. This was not the pert, saucy, little girl he had taken from Bender, nor the little playmate of the children, nor yet the quiet, domestic woman who had served him that night in the kitchen.

There was an indefinable charm about her that defied definition or analysis – a rapt, exquisite look that lifted her up – up to his primitive ideal.

“Pen!”

He started toward her, seemed to remember, hesitated and then asked lamely:

“What have you been doing all day?”

Her former little air of raillery crept back momentarily at his change of tone.

“A narrow escape,” she thought, as she said aloud, reckless of consequences: “I motored into town by myself; bought some new clothes; had dinner with an old friend; saw an aeroplane go up and – ”

He smiled in a bored way and asked her some irrelevant question.

“The easiest way to deceive, as Hebby always said, is to tell the truth,” she thought.

“Pen!” He spoke with a return of his first manner. “I – ”

“I am very tired,” she quickly interrupted, “I think I will say good-night, now.”

“Don’t go yet,” he urged, “I – ”

“I want to be alone,” she replied wearily.

“There is something I want to say to you. Jo Gary comes to-morrow!”

“Yes,” she answered indifferently. “Mr. Westcott found another manager, did he?”

“You knew Jo was at Westcott’s?” he gasped.

“Certainly. I’ve seen Jo a number of times.”

“When, where?” he demanded in displeased tone.

“Let me think. Why, he came back from Westcott’s the day after my arrival. Their manager postponed departure. So Jo was here for the dance, and on field day – and – I think he went back to Westcott’s the day you came back. Wasn’t it all right to see him?” she asked guilelessly. “Mrs. Kingdon didn’t object.”

“What other times did you see him?”

“I heard him whistle one night, and I slid down the big tree near my window. Then he came one morning to bring me flowers. I am glad he is coming for keeps. He livens things up, Jo does.”

“Why did neither you nor he speak of your having met?”

“I begged him not to, because I felt that you wouldn’t approve.”

An intense silence followed.

“Do you think,” he asked bitterly, “that you are fair to Jo – ”

“To Jo?” she asked in surprise. “I don’t understand.”

“You do understand. Jo told me what he asked you in Chicago and how you left him – to reform – to be worthy of his love.”

“I haven’t deceived Jo,” she replied slowly. “I told him where you found me and why. He doesn’t care. He understands. Jo loves – ”

The pause that followed was so prolonged that she stole another side-glance. She had a sudden, swift insight into the power and vigor of the man – the inner man.

“That the girl he loves,” she continued softly, “is a thief, makes no difference to Jo.”

“Remember, Jo is only a boy – younger than you in all but years.”

“Only a boy, it is true, but with the faith and love of a man.”

He started from his chair and came up close to her.

“Answer me,” he said, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Do you love Jo Gary?”

A sort of paralysis seemed to grip her, and she felt helpless to move her eyes from his. Her lips were slightly parted and he could feel the pull of her nerves. For a moment she looked like a startled deer, quivering at the approach of man, with no place to run.

Then she recovered.

“Ask Jo,” she said defiantly, and sped from the room.

“Jo didn’t tell me how much he had confided in Kurt,” she thought. “What a wee world it is! I can’t see how, with all the shuffling billions of people, the same two, once parted, should ever meet. I believe I was wrong about Kurt. For a moment I was almost afraid of him.”

Kurt gazed into the fire, his gray eyes alert and a soft smile on his lips. He had not been misled. He had clearly read an answer in the young eyes looking into his own.

“She doesn’t love Jo,” he thought, and the knowledge was quickly darkened by the remembrance of what it would mean to the boy-lover.

CHAPTER X

“Jo!” called Pen, running down the road as she spied him driving away in a lightweight mountain wagon.

Quickly he reined in the pair of prancing horses.

“What ’tis, Miss Penny Ante? Isn’t it great that I am back to stay?”

“Indeed it is. Where are you going and may I go, too?”

“Over to Westcott’s, and I’d love to have you go with me.”

“I’ll have to get a furlough and a hat. Just wait a moment.”

She found Kurt and asked his permission with all the pretty pleading of a child in her voice. Her face was singularly young; her eyes like a mirror.

“I’ve never ridden in a wagon,” she said breathlessly, seeing that his expression wasn’t as forbidding as usual. “And I’ll come back. Can’t you see I want to come back?”

Something sweet dawned in his eyes.

“Yes;” he said, a note of exultation sounding in his voice with the knowledge that his last stand of resistance to long-held theories was giving away before some new force, powerful and overwhelming. “You may go. I wish I were driving instead of Jo, but – ”

He stood watching her as she sped back to where Jo was waiting, and his gaze still followed as the horses tore over the road to Westcott’s. There was a far-away look in his eye and a faint smile about the curves of his mouth. Subconsciously, as though he were the one beside her, he followed in fancy after the wagon was lost to sight around the hills. He could see the point where the road would disappear into a plain, covered with soft grass over which the sleek horses would bound. He knew Jo’s irresistible bubbling gaiety, and the sparkle she would add to it. He wondered why he had never thought to take her for a drive. There had been no chance to talk to her in their rides. She always put spurs to her horse when he tried to talk to her.

All sense of time left him. The symphony of the hill winds from the south was in his ears; the beauty of the day in all his being. Vividly he recalled their ride in the early dawn and the brief moment she had lain unconscious in his arms. Ever since that moment he had barricaded himself against her appeal and charm. He felt himself yielding and knew that the yielding was bringing him happiness.

“I am in a Fool’s Paradise,” he thought, “but still a Paradise. She doesn’t care for me any more than she cares for Jo. I wonder does he know it, or is she deceiving him? I fear so, for he seems absurdly happy.”

He was still lost in the dreams of the lotus-eater when he heard something that resembled the rattling of his own noisy car. Looking down the hill road from town, he saw a vehicle approaching which he recognized as the “town taxi.” It turned into the ranch grounds and he quickly went to the front of the house, supposing that Kingdon or his wife must have returned.

A strange young girl was alighting. As he went wonderingly to meet her, he saw that she was city-bred. She seemed to be dazed by the illimitable spaces and was blinking from the sunshine. His observant eye noted the smart suitcase and the wardrobe trunk the man was depositing on the porch. There was city shrewdness in having had the amount of the fare fixed before leaving town.

She was a little slip of a girl with a small-featured face and a certain pale prettiness. There was an appealing tinge of melancholy in her eyes notwithstanding they were eager and alert. Her dress was plain, but natty and citified.

“Is this Top Hill – where Mrs. Kingdon lives?” she asked in a low, softly-pitched voice.

“Yes;” he replied, “but Mrs. Kingdon is away – ”

“I know – but she wrote me to come here; that she would be home very soon.”

“I am glad to hear that. Come in,” he urged hospitably, as he picked up her suitcase. “The housekeeper will make you comfortable.”